Hi all! I have a Falcon that I replaced the original NVram/RTC with a Dallas IC. I did the same thing a few months ago on another falcon with no problems. I got both dallas IC's at the same time a couple years ago. This current falcon booted before the upgrade. Now when I boot a get a message on my LCD display saying 'out of range'. This same LCD display says 'not connected' when there is no source. So I think the falcon is sending something. I think I need to reset the nvram somehow. I seem to recall a thread that mentions there is keyboard key combination that will do a reset. Is there such a thing?If not, suggestions?This had a 14MB ram upgrade long ago. The green keyboard LED lights, but FD light not all on boot. I do not have a HD attached. The original was dead.any help?Thanks

wongck, that key combination did not work. Mikro, I'd rather not pull the dallas out just yet. Last resort, that will be. My soldering is ok, not PRO. But I checked with a magnifying glass and did not see any shorts from solder. I wiped with a IBA, and toothbrush. Could the Dallas be incompatible with the memory upgrade? See pic with dallas on the right. could this being so close to the dallas be the problem?Also I put a pic of the 14mb upgrade, and some small orange caps(7,),and 2 Fe cores that my or may not have been added By Atari. Can someone verify?

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Noticed a couple of my LCD's will display either of those messages time to time, I wouldn't use this as an indicator there is VIDEL output.

The RAM GIZZMO looks like one I gave away a year or so ago. Those are VERY early boards, and fragile. Do you have the stock 4mb to test with? Bad memory will cause no video output as ST RAM is used there.Buffer mod looks ok, as long as it worked before, and the stand up SMD resistors we not presses on. Your soldering very close to the Main clock ad well, inspect that area as well.Pretty sure the keyboard light just indicates power source, floppy activity is down on the board initialization sequence.

It could be that the NVRAM have been corrupted. Have a look at this site http://www.holmerup.com/index2.html.Under "Trouble shooting" you will find some info about it. There is a program you can download to reset it from floppy.

Thanks everyone for those great suggestions!Here are the results:SM124 is no joy. dark screen. no response. Nothing, not even blips on screen on power upI swapped out the 14mb upgrade to the other known working 14mb upgrade from the other falcon I have. Nothing. I do not have a oem 4mb board. I reseated all socketed IC's again. Nothing. I pull out the FPU IC, just to check, nothing after boot. Reconnected FD. Checked its activity light. nothing on boot. So I can't run the vmram reset program fidzen suggested. I am thinking of what mikro said about burned holes. Pins 1 and 13 took a lot of heat during original extraction, the pins did not want to come out. The holes looked ok after I got the pins out. The silver rings were still there. I did about the same work for my other working falcon. but there could be internal damage anyway. How to test or check that?Should I get the dallas IC out, and put in a socket, then get another dallas IC? Or exxos mvram alternitive? Or after I pull the dallas is there a test I can do with a multimeter to see if it has gone bad?

Man, just take the working NVRAM chip from the other Falcon and you immediately know whether you have done something wrong or whether the chip is bad... I really don't get why do you start with the most complicated procedures first. :)

EDIT: Oh wait. You seem to have soldered the NVRAM chip without a socket?! Oh boy. That wasn't very clever. ;)

Ya I'm a dope!! When I do something like this I think it will always work,'it's so simple' is in my mind. I do not think long term, like what happens if it dose not work....I think 'It worked last time, so it will work this time'... Lesson now learned about sockets!! And I have so many sockets around I could open a shop for them!!

Just to check, a stock Falcon, will boot without a VMRam installed, with 14mb ram, no HD, no KB, No FD, connected to SM124??

KLund1 wrote:Ya I'm a dope!! When I do something like this I think it will always work,'it's so simple' is in my mind. I do not think long term, like what happens if it dose not work....I think 'It worked last time, so it will work this time'... Lesson now learned about sockets!! And I have so many sockets around I could open a shop for them!!

Just to check, a stock Falcon, will boot without a VMRam installed, with 14mb ram, no HD, no KB, No FD, connected to SM124??

Don't beat yourself down Klund1, i have screwed many things up in the past and still till this day. It's a learning expierience, but people think they are perfect at everything they do, well i would like to see them walk on water anyhow, i have a strong feeling you might of burned a trace when you desoldered the NVRAM. I am not using a Socket for my NVRAM and i have no problems. What i would do is pull out the Falcon 030 schematics and trace every line going "In and Out" of NVRAM chip. I am almost certain you burned a trace, Falcon are multiple layer PCB's so the trace must be deep inside. No worried it can be repaired, pull out your old VOM and set to Continuity check or beep mode, trace pin per pin on NVRAM going out. Your gonna need a magnifier or unless your a young lad with 20/20 vision

Yep, if you want to see what kind of idiot I was and what damage I had caused... viewtopic.php?f=27&t=19368&p=282899& ;) But the Falcon lives, currently at Jookie's place (how ironic -- he had fixed it for me!), to this very day!

This is why I'm against advising every owner to replace the caps in their machines that are showing no problems.While there's nothing wrong with swapping them out in concept, a lot of people are not good with soldering and risk damaging their pride and joy.What's easy for one person is not easy for the next.

Yes live and learn, but possibly expensive lesson. Pulling Dallas tonight, and will try booting without it. I hope it boots. I will then put in a socket.

Found Schematics, but they are hard to read. Also I am not at all good at reading them anyway. I pretty sure this is it, by looking on the MB and the Dallas is in location U64. I can't read where pin 1 & 24 go, same for pin 18. Also not sure where a ground is to test pin 12. Also not 100% where pin 1 is on the actual dallas. Is it under the dot under and left of the printed + in the pic above

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Not an expert, have a dead bird myself First thing the Falcon does at boot is look for a magic number to see if it should boot from the cartridge port, else boot from ROM.Might give you a few more traces to ring out.

Mikro, Lonny's dev-docs archive (look for Service Guide) Can't find. I probably should have, but I have not heard of this. Can you post a link?

And here are a few pics of my good Falcon. Sorry for the bad pic quality. Also got a exxos psu in there. It really make a noticeable difference. Highly recommended! The CF has as many partitions as needed with HDDriver, and SD is FAT partitioned to swap files from my main PC. Had the SD slot professionally cut. It has an inner nylon lining so the SD slides better.

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